Something to crow about
My head was pounding.
The space between my eyes throbbed as I turned over in bed. The morning was insistent. I squeezed my eyelids shut, trying to keep the sun’s intruding light from splitting my skull in two.
It didn’t feel like it would work.
I could hear crows calling each other overhead. I wanted them to hush. Why couldn’t they be songbirds?
Why did they have to be so brash?
It was my own discom- fort that answered. Ever songbirds right now would seem too loud.
Allergies? Maybe. Too many black thoughts not enough black coffee? A distinct possibility, but who knows? My daughter likes to blame alcohol. But she wasn’t counting the single glass of wine I drank only to half before pouring out in the sink. I’m nothing if not a one-drink wonder.
Pottery clattered around harmlessly in the kitchen. I could hear her cheerful voice mix with others as the
morning grew older. Paper thin walls and an open portal acted to transfigure me into the conversation.
I could smell bacon, but I couldn’t reach it, not that the pain in my head would have unclenched my stomach enough to allow such grift.
It’s late. I should get up and find painkillers.
Instead, I pinched the webbing between each thumb and forefinger with the opposing afore-named digits.
It is not in my nature to subscribe to the art of medical hocus-pocus. I prefer to employ the socially accepted services of Dr. Google and panic. But I am trying to believe “doing no harm” is still possible, if only in the adage of “less is more” or “wait
and see.”
I have to admit, the webskin-pinch seems to work in alleviating my sinus pain, even if just to take my mind off it until I muster the gumption to locate a pair of analgesics and a glass of water with which to wash them down. In 20 minutes I will be me again, which I’m not saying is fine. It’s just a person - foibles and all - who’s become familiar to the voices in the kitchen if not entirely recognizable to myself.
“You are like a crow,” my daughter said with a laugh the night before at bedtime. The room stoped breathing as the barb came perilously close to the truth before it veered into a safer direction.
She nodded at my wrist,
which had a sleeve of bangles and other baubles she recognized as hers, and which I’ve readily admitted to having collected as I tidy up the floor, or sink basins, or from between the couch cushions where they’d been abandoned. Places, I am quick to point out, were not where these beloved things belonged.
What one person calls finding another calls theft.
I am like that crow. ... And all of the others the fairytales warn us of.
I will be the person who swoops into the conversation unannounced and illinformed. Adding two cents that throws off the balance.
My voice sounding more and more like a cackle. Again with the allergies!
“Can you believe she’s fifty? I know my mom is 50 but ...”
“Your mom is not 50!” I holler from above, a disembodied voice out of nowhere, fully invested in the misery that also sparked laughter. And although I was fervent in clinging to the last year of my forth decade, I had to admit the moment was funny.
I am that old crow. Curved of beak and black of hair, now from a bottle instead of nature. Fooling no one. It’s a feeling that will pass as soon as the ibuprofen takes effect.
Siobhan Connally is a writer and photographer living in the Hudson Valley. Her column about family life appears weekly in print and online.